ROOTS & BRANCHES

A long time ago in a dating galaxy far, far away, I had a disastrous first date in which I had to explain that “genealogy” was not a single lecture topic and that family history conferences could stretch on for several days with hundreds of topics. Her reaction sealed the fate that there would be …

Last week’s installment of the “Roots & Branches” column talked about “presentism” – taking an (often unintentional) view that things in the past have been the same as we think of them today – as a curse of assumption that may afflict our genealogy. While I was using that as a jumping off point to …

One of the things I tackle in my new book The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide is what I call “presentism.” What “presentism” is, in short, is making assumptions about the past based on our own present-day experiences. An example from the newspaper world is assuming that the writeups of individuals’ deaths we now call …

When the first great wave of genealogy happened in the late 19th century, it was ignited by the United States centennial in 1876 and continued with the publication of many county biographical histories into the early 1900s. These county histories – often called “mug books” because they have photographs of many the individuals featured, usually …

For something that often goes by the name of “family history,” genealogy in the Internet age has become as much or more solitary as social. This is as a result of the ability of genealogists to access so many records at home from their computer desktops instead of going out into the world chasing those …